In the structural clay and refractory industries capable of mass production, ceramic units are either made by the extrusion or the pressing process. Extrusion is preferred when dealing with plastic raw materials, whereas pressing is rather used to agglomerate non-plastic materials. The process in making these products consists in quarrying the clay, milling and grinding the same. Then, the clay is cleared of stones and extruded in pug mills. When using non-plastic clays, plasticizers can be added to the mixture before extrusion, or the shaped units can be made by pressing. The resulting units are dried and finally fired. As the temperature of firing increases beyond red heat, vitrification occurs.
Vitrification is the hardening, tightening and finally the partial fusing of clay. Clays vitrify at various temperatures depending upon their composition. A common red clay, for example, which as a high iron content and other mineral impurities, may be fired to hardness and density at about 1000.degree. C. and may melt to a liquid at about 1250.degree. C. More refractory clays fire somewhere between 1000.degree. and 1250.degree. C. A well-fired piece of clay is characterized by hardness, great compressive strength, high density, impermeability and by a very large and easily controlled variety of color and texture which is reminiscent of the variety in the earthy materials of the landscape. When the compressive strength is higher than 20 MPA, and water absorption lower than 18%, the units can be used as building blocks. If water absorption is lower than 5%, the units can be used as quarry or paver tiles, according to the American specification ANSI A1-37, 1-1980 or the Canadian equivalent specification CAN2-75.1-M77.
It is also known that serpentine, more particularly chrysotile asbestos tailings, contains the constituents of olivine, that is magnesium oxide, silicon dioxide and ferric oxide, though in different proportions. It is also known that there is an enormous amount of chrysotile asbestos tailings and residues in countries where asbestos mining is carried out to a large extent, so that it would appear that great advantages could be derived if a satisfactory method could be found to modify or convert the plentiful asbestos tailings into sintered moulded units, having properties equivalent to commercial ceramic bodies made from clays.
Asbestos tailings have a low commercial value and the appropriate granulometry is already available for pressing. Accordingly, quarrying, milling, grinding and cleaning raw materials which are required for clays, are not required when dealing with asbestos tailings. However, since the tailings are more refractory than clays, they sinter at a much higher temperature.
Accordingly, it would appear highly desirable if asbestos tailings could be sintered at as low a temperature as possible whereby the energy cost would be substantially reduced while still obtaining sintered units of the same quality level as those of standard clay products.